Saturday April 30th: Westport to Boyle, Ireland
Bob: We started off our day with the short drive to a new branch of the National Museum of Ireland that had opened in 2001 in Castlebar, Ireland. The museum concerned the history of the everyday life in Ireland from roughly 1850 to 1950, and I was keen to see it. We drove into the grounds of an old manor house past a gatehouse and the ruins of some old building on the right to reach a parking lot shortly after the museum opened at 10:00 a.m. |
Monika: Our first stop was a National Country Life museum just about 30 km along the road we were going to take anyway. It was situated in a large park with a beautiful manor house. In front of the manor house was a well manicured garden with fountain. |
Bob: Admission was free, but the first building was the old manor house that also contained a gift shop. The manor house was of the English type and had been restored and furnished to represent the late 1800s era that the museum was focused on. It epitomized the residences of the English ruling class at that time but did not, of course, have anything to do with how the majority of the Irish folk lived. |
Monika: Inside the manor house were a few exhibits of the library, a gift shop, and a tearoom. |
Bob: That story was told in 4 floors of exhibits in the main gallery building, and what an interesting, multi-faceted story it was! One of the first exhibits was the contrast of the mythology versus the reality of daily life in Ireland in the recent past. Mythology, epitomized in movies like "The Quiet Man" and "The Man of Aran", painted a picture of a charming, bucolic and happy people living industrious, fulfilled lives amidst the splendor of rural scenery. The reality was a gritty, hardscrabble fight both to win the land and wrest a living from it in any way possible. Winning the land was a long struggle against the English aristocracy that had occupied the land for centuries. The "enclosure" movement in England had its parallel in Ireland where cottagers were simply forced off the land of the landlord. Usually this was done by the simple expedient of tearing down the family's house and forbidding anyone else from taking them in. But some extremely inhuman expedients were also used such as a "man trap", which was a huge bear trap designed to trap anyone intruding on the landlord's estates. This was the first time I had ever seen such a barbarically cruel device. |
Monika: The museum itself was a new building on the back. It was built into the ground so that it would not be visible from in front of the manor house, but then it went three stories down. On the main floor were some pictures and exhibits of clothes, and even some clothes for kids to try on. What surprised us, was that the boys wore actual skirts. The reason, we were given was, that the fairies would not take them. It seems, fairies don't like girls. Ah, sexism raises its ugly head even in fairyland. Another exhibit was a rather famous cross, the Cross of Cong. It was built in the 13th century as reliquary of a sliver of the "true" cross. The sliver had been lost while the cross was moved from here to there and back again. It was quite beautiful, and I am glad it is now at a place, where people can enjoy it. |
Bob: Many farm implements from that era including the horse-drawn plow, a cart for hauling peat, and feeding troughs for farm animals, were also on display. As in the U.S., the number farms under 5 acres declined over time while the large farms stayed steady or increased slightly. But that trend allowed a shift from horse power to tractor power that eased the working day of a typical farmer. Similarly, those thatched roofs on cottages may have looked charming, but they provided habitat to various vermin and resulted in damp interior conditions. Correspondingly, tuberculosis rates in Ireland were high until something as simple as a switch to slate roofs created a drier and healthier environment in the rural cottages. |
Monika: The next two stories going down held information on everyday life in Ireland. There were information panels on different professionals in the village, like headmaster, carpenter, turner, shoe maker, store owner, joiner etc. There were also panels on the different times of year and what holidays were associated with each. They all fell into the natural rhythm of life on the land. |
Bob: Wresting a living from the land involved backbreaking, daylong labor for farmers, fishermen, and all the other folks who formed the basis of the rural economy. The museum had a nice collection of artifacts including reed and cowhide boats for fishing on interior lakes and rivers, as well as a curragh for fishing offshore. |
Monika: Further on were detailed information on life on the sea and life on land with a lot of details. Altogether these exhibits gave a very complete picture of life in Ireland. |
Bob: All in all, there was a massive amount of information in that museum and the depiction of everyday life in Ireland in the last 150 years was, I think, far more accurate than Hollywood's movie version or even the prettified version that the Bunratty Folk Park (see Wanderung 9 for details) presents to tourists. |
Monika: We now were ready to look at the gift store. We found a rather nice Irish-style cap for Bob. We also picked up a book of Irish Ballads with a CD and the music and words, so if we really like a song, we can try to sing it. |
Bob: After purchasing a genuine Irish wool cap and a book and CD of Irish folks songs in the gift shop, we drove on in the direction of Sligo, diverting over to see the Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. Although still actively used as pasture by the local sheep farmer, the amazing collection of old stone tombs and stone circles at Carrowmore was astonishingly dense for such a small area (maybe 10 acres in all?). The ticket office cum visitor's center did not, surprisingly, have a gift shop but it did have a small but very effective explanation of the general life and times of the folks who build the tombs from around 4000 B.C. to 3000 B.C. |
Monika: Before we reached Sligo, we decided to visit the rather large Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. Of course, the exit I wanted to take from the interstate did not seem to be the right one and floundered around a bit, before Bob asked for directions. Contrary to the stereotype, in our marriage, Bob asks and I flounder around. |
Bob: Many tombs had been destroyed for their stones by local folks in the succeeding centuries, of course, but what remained was still quite impressive. We wandered around the tombs and stone circles for about half an hour and then continued to Sligo where we intended to stay the night. |
Monika: In any case, we found it and I was surprised by the size of it. There were enclosed tombs, Dolmans, and even stone circles. We had gotten a little booklet when we paid the entrance fee and tried to read all the descriptions. |
Bob: As my Grandpappy used to say, "Sometimes you bite the bear, and sometimes the bear bites you!" In this instance, we cruised back and forth through downtown Sligo trying to find a B&B that was open for business, but in the end were unsuccessful and had to turn back South where our books indicated more B&Bs were to be found. Thereafter followed a long marathon of driving around the back roads of Ireland, locating a B&B with great difficulty, and then finding that they had not yet opened for the season or were full. We saw a lot of the pretty countryside, but as the hours wore on I was getting really tired of driving. Finally, around 7:30 p.m. as we were leaving Boyle, we saw an open B&B on the main road, slammed on the brakes, and hustled in to ask about a room. They were booked for the night, but the proprietress called around to the other B&Bs in the area and found a room for 3 people for the night back down the road a ways. We had in fact driven right past that B&B on the way out of Boyle, but since they did not have a sign up or any indication that they were open, we had not even noticed it. By then I was exhausted and just collapsed for the night. |
Monika: We decided not to have lunch quite yet, but go on to Sligo and look for a B&B to stay and a place to eat. So far everything had gone perfectly on our trip, but now we got into trouble. We did not find a B&B in Sligo and decided to go back south. Our map showed where there might be places to eat in that general direction. We finally did spot a restaurant and stopped for a bite to eat. We felt better, but still had to find a place a stay. We followed one sign 7 kilometers up a mountain only to find that it did not have any vacancies. Back down the mountain we kept looking for any B&B. It was getting to be after 6 and Bob was getting tired. We drove through a town called Boyle, without finding a B&B, but once back out on the highway, I spotted one. We stopped, and asked. They did not have any vacancy, but she called a lady in town, who had one room with a double bed and a single bed. That was good enough for us, we thanked the proprietress and drove back into Boyle and found the B&B. She did not have her sign up yet, so I had a good excuse, why I did not find this particular B&B. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Transatlantic Cruise | Map of Drive in Ireland | Epilog |
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